For as much as I want to see the racist and sexist campaign bullshit come to a swift end, I can't abide the new meme that now we all need to ignore race and sex and focus on "the issues." Race and sex are not separate from "the issues" in this contest; for as long as Clinton has a vagina and Obama has brown skin, they will be smack dab among the issues with enormous relevance to the upcoming elections and the future of this country. To interpret a race that includes the first viable African-American and female candidates in history any other way is ... well, fiction.

Oh thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou.

Man, that was awesome.

She rocks out loud. I owe Teppy a huge debt of thanks for introducing me to her writing.

Kate Harding at Shakespeare's Sister has a great response to Lorrie Moore.

Dammit! The one place I didn't look. I checked out the other usual suspects, but skipped over SS. I imagine others will be commenting soon.

they take being advantaged as the standard and anything less is a loss.

I imagine this is the case. Though I wouldn't say it is with young African American males.

I'm probably going to hell. Cause when she started in on the boys, I rolled my eyes and thought "Guess who got The Wire season 4."(I hate to say that because I'm probably not that different. But.) That's so stupid I probably can't like her stories anymore. Because I know if I were ever the second crip president,I know every decision I ever made would be affected by the fact that I was born a disabled *woman* at my particular point in history.(And being white does not guarantee middle-class status, either.) That doesn't mean I only care about those issues, though, even though inner-city things are not things I know in my bones.

I love this:

We are in no way beyond the need for a woman president or a president of color -- a fact that's perhaps best illustrated by the ongoing insistence that it's an either/or proposition, as if women of color are some sort of mythical creatures.

Of course they're not. But thinking of it that way brings up Condi, for whom I would never vote in a billion years.

I think it's just the idea that because one segment of the population is discriminated against clearly means another is not is completely rediculous-because what of people who are both? Are they only affected as an African American, and not as a woman, or as a woman but not an African American.

well, yeah. Sometimes I face sexism and ableism from the same place...other times it's harder to sort out.

If you're sick of Clintons, sick of anything that reminds you of the last 20 years in American politics, and/or sick when you think about Hillary's Iraq vote, triangulation, etc., then go vote for someone else with my unequivocal blessing. But do not EVEN fucking tell me the "political moment for feminine role models" is a thing of the past when I can still count all the female politicians with national prominence ON ONE GODDAMNED HAND.

Please stick to fiction, Lorrie Moore. This op-ed demonstrates that it's your forte on so many levels.

I want to have Kate Harding's babies.